Does the context make a difference?: Students' ability in decision-making and the influence of contexts

The paper reports the theoretical background and design of a study as well as first findings concerning the influence of different contexts on students’ ability in decision-making about socio-scientific issues. The primary focus is on the effects contexts have on the difficulty of tasks that require decision-making. Improving students’ ability to judge and evaluate ethically is an important part of modern and competence-oriented biology education. The decisions students have to make as politically mature citizens often evoke ethically difficult questions. In order to act and decide responsibly, students do not only need biological content-knowledge, but also the ability to make reflected decisions. Concerning decision-making in frame of this work; four main contexts that are of ethical relevance in biology could be identified: environment & sustainability, health, animals and medicine. Results of recent studies indicate that these different contexts might influence students’ decision-making abilities (i.a. Sadler & Zeidler, 2004). When students involve with socio-scientific contexts, certain context-person-valences (e.g. interestingness, familiarity) arise. These valences are not in a context itself but arise when a person gets into contact with a certain context. This study seeks to find out if and in how far students’ abilities in decision-making depend on the respective contexts and the context-person-valences. The results of the empirical investigations show that the test instruments that were generated in order to assess students’ abilities in decision-making and to analyze context-person-valences are suitable for this purpose. Analyses of the contexts show that the contexts of tasks do not have a direct influence on students’ decision-making abilities.